Windows 7 Performance Guide

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• DominionSeraph - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link

  "I just don't understand why holdouts on XP like to argue how good it is in comparison to Vista"
  
  Because they tried to cram Vista on to a PIII with 256MB of ram, and they're too young to have known REAL speed: Windows 98SE.

• chrnochime - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  Yes but with that REAL speed came frequent BSODs for me. I stuck with 98SE until end of 2002(!) and after moving over to xp, no more BSOD. Exact same hardwares too.

• ProDigit - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  What are you saying?
  
  Vista runs slacky on just about any laptop with specs lower than Core2Duo T5500, or Core2Duo's with lower than 1MB L cache, and a drive slower than 5200rpm.
  
  Even on an AMD dualcore 2,4Ghz with 4GB of RAM, I noticed the OS being sluggish!
  It performs worse than MacOs, XP, Linux, and Win7!
  It is possibly the worst OS ever created!

• Genx87 - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  I think just about any OS will slack when you stick it on a 4200 RPM drive. I am assuming you meant 4200 instead of 5200?
  
  I had Dell laptops back in 03-04 that performed like 386's because some bean counter figured we can save 20 bucks a laptop using 4200 rpm drives. Idiot didnt think about the wasted productivity when the user waits 10 minutes for the thing to boot and 2 mins to open outlook.
  
  

• DominionSeraph - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  XP ain't no sprite. When my Vista box went down, I ripped out its X2 5200+ to replace my backup XP box's 3200+, and with that huge leap it now equals what my Vista box was like.
  There really ain't a difference once you go dual-core with decent specs.
  
  Compare this to Win 98. Whereas XP dogs a 3200+ with 2GB, 98 has sub-10 second boot times on a PIII 700MHz, and you aren't gonna notice a difference in snappiness from a Celeron 400. (You don't get any faster than 'instant'.)
  
  XP is bloatware and really doesn't have a hardware niche. Anything that can't run Vista would be better off with Win98.
  
  

• poached - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link

  but you can't get drivers for windows 98. The installer will probably crash if you tried. plus, 98 was really unstable (compared to OSs of today) because programs could corrupt the memory easily. Not to mention no security of any kind. There is a penalty to make OS secure and stable.

• pullmyfoot - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link

  I bought Vista when it came out and dual booted it with XP. I didnt really like it, and Vista almost never got used. It was like that for a year and a half, and then I installed the W7 RC. I have not missed XP one bit.
  
  As for the people who say W7 is less snappy than XP, well in my own experience W7 feels more snappy than XP to me any day.

• ProDigit - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  I noticed the opposite when testing XP VS Win7 RC and Beta.
  I found XP to be more snappy than Win7, running it from a lower specced laptop.
  I did have XP optimized though. Perhaps if I give the final version of Win7 a Win2000 theme, and optimize it a bit, it will be as snappy as XP.

• ProDigit - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  I noticed the opposite when testing XP VS Win7 RC and Beta.
  I found XP to be more snappy than Win7, running it from a lower specced laptop.
  I did have XP optimized though. Perhaps if I give the final version of Win7 a Win2000 theme, and optimize it a bit, it will be as snappy as XP.

• andrewaggb - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link

  I'd be curious if you can get it to feel as fast as xp on a really slow laptop. I sold my netbook a year ago (1024x600 didn't cut it), but now that you can get ones with a better resolution screen I might consider getting another one with win7 if it doesn't run awful.